


Up The Wolves

by zenonaa



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, Dangan Ronpa: Another Episode, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: F/M, discussion of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 20:24:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17987960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenonaa/pseuds/zenonaa
Summary: 'Water ran down stone, streaking it, staining it. Later, it would dry, and later still, it would become dirty again. Regardless, she cleaned it anyway. She poured water over it several times. Then she put the bucket and dipper down, placed her hands together in prayer, and she said, “Father. Mothers...”'Fukawa visits the family grave.





	Up The Wolves

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H10mhHNW1Rs for the mood
> 
> There is a LOT of one-sided talk about abuse, as a warning.

Her story didn’t begin on a train. It could be traced back to Touko’s childhood, to her birth, to her conception. Further. Far, far back. To when her parents met, to when they were her age, or even younger. Whatever made them the way they were, how she remembered them. 

However, at that moment, Touko was on a train, hunched up sitting on a patchy purple seat. Thoughts whirled in her head, stirred rigorously, so thick that she could barely breathe as her knuckles turned white on the stanchion beside her. She sat with an unoccupied seat beside her, duffel bag pulled onto her lap, graciously lent by Aoi Asahina. Ever since she had sat down about three hours ago, she hadn’t really moved. Sometimes, her feet shifted so her toes pointed inward, only to drift and face out again, and sometimes, Touko twitched as she cleared her throat and her gaze would flicker. 

Her clearest memory of being on a train was coming back from Shikoku on a pitch black night, teeth chattering, head pounding, the smell of blood hanging in her nose from the scissors in her bag that she planned to bury in her garden when she finally got home. While the woman, most likely a mother, who helped her to the station some time after Touko stumbled out of an alley, didn’t treat Touko as anything but a lost little girl, Touko remembered feeling like everyone stared at her, constantly, as she sat alone on the train, and even now, on this train, she felt like people were secretly watching her.

No, Touko had never liked trains. She breathed in a vinyl odour.

Eventually, the train stopped for a second time. Everyone rose except Touko, but after a delay, she stood up too. Touko trooped out of the train, just one of the crowd, swept up by a rush of people. 

Stairs led up, up off the drab station, and after a series of grey corridors, she reached some gates. She inserted her ticket. The machine spat it out on the other side and she passed through. Her heart bumped around in her throat and she finally stepped out into evening’s birth. Overhead, the sky was a gradient between deep blue and rusty red, with yellows and a slither of green nestled between them. 

Had it not been for a gust of wind, she might have stared up for longer. Touko jutted her head forward and took off sluggishly. Though a lot of the shops that she had known were long since replaced, boarded up in cases, and the hard pavement underfoot beared cracks that she didn’t know, only their predecessors, long gone, she recalled the layout of the streets. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t been here for a long, long time. 

When she walked to school, she would have crossed the road here, for example, and then headed right, but Touko wasn’t going to her old elementary school. She veered right instead, and her feet dragged her through several streets until she arrived at a gradual slope of stone steps that led up to a foreboding metal gate. 

At the bottom of the steps was a modestly size flower shop with a polished marble storefront and large, gaping windows. Pots of flowers littered the space just outside, trying their best to brighten the scenery. Touko didn’t smile. With hardened features, she took a deep breath and opened the door. 

A bell jingled. Inside were even more flowers, but also boxes stacked on top of each other, and on one wall hung a framed painting of a mother and daughter, presumably. There wasn’t much space to maneuver around in, but Touko didn’t have to. Upon her entering, a woman turned away from a hanging pot, and her eyes glinted on her candle lit face.

“You,” the woman blurted. If Touko was to guess, she would place the woman about ten years older than her. The woman had beads in her hair and wore jeans dirty at the bottom. She lowered the watering can in her hold. “I’ve seen you before...”

Touko stayed silent. Let the woman piece the memories together by herself.

“You used to come here,” the woman said, and she approached slowly, staring like Touko was a trick of the light and could so easily disappear and become the shadows in the nooks of the room.

Neither spoke for a bit. She studied Touko some more, then nodded, mostly to herself.

“Yes. I saw you a few times when my mother worked here,” the woman explained. Her mother was the person in the framed painting with her teenage daughter, now the woman in front of Touko. “Wow, it’s been so long...”

A small smile split the woman’s face. Touko didn’t waver.

“I need to borrow a bucket and dipper,” said Touko. Her voice seemed loud in the otherwise still room. “I’d also like to buy some chrysanthemums.”

The woman blinked. “Huh? Oh, right, of course.” 

She fetched them for Touko, who unzipped her duffel bag and got out her purse. 

“No, no!” The woman lightly clutched Touko’s wrist. “It’s free, for you.”

Touko tensed.

“Do I look poor?” she snarled, and the woman cringed.

“It’s not that,” the woman said. “It’s just nice to see you. I didn’t know if I ever would again...”

“I don’t need your charity,” huffed Touko, but if the woman wanted to lend her the things for free, that was on her paycheck, not on Touko. 

Accepting the woman’s offer, she slipped the flowers into her duffel bag carefully and zipped it up again.

“How have you been?” asked the woman.

“I’ve been. I am,” said Touko, and she left. The woman didn’t try going after her and probably didn’t hear the small “thanks” that Touko added under her breath.

With the bucket and dipper in her possession and the duffel bag strap slung over her shoulder, Touko returned to the steps and ascended. Touko trudged up and up, and she came upon the metal gate. She had visited this place in the past, a lot, and she saw it whenever her gaze became vacant and sometimes in her dreams. Before she opened the gate, she puffed out her chest, but the heaviness in her bones wouldn’t budge, her heart stayed lodged in her throat and the fog in her head didn’t disperse. 

This, she would have to accept, because she would never be more ready than this, and the gate creaked as she opened it.

All around her were graves. They striped a huge, steep hillside. At this point, the numbness brought on by determination had started to dissolve, and Touko realised how tired she was. Breathing grated the back of her throat and walking forward, she discovered her feet had turned to sludge. The colour of the sky had deepened, and without the occasional lamp post, she would have struggled to differentiate between checkered slabs and grass. She wound through rows of headstones and statues, each marking life and death. To her relief, she didn’t see anyone - she was alone.

Mixed in with the relief, however, was a hard knot in her stomach. Her fingers itched. No one would see her leave if she slipped out before... before she... before. And while her friends knew her destination, she suspected that none of them would broach the subject until she brought it up. Not tactless Komaru, or nosy Yasuhiro, chatty Aoi, tense Kyouko, open Makoto, or enticing Byakuya Togami...

Touko licked her bitten lips and walked some more, stopping at a certain family grave, dirtied by loneliness and time, overgrown with weeds. It consisted of stone blocks closely packed together that reminded her of high rise buildings of different heights, low walls bordering the space allotted to it. Her legs creaked as she crouched down. 

Shaking slightly, she set the bucket and dipper down and removed the duffel bag from her shoulder, fumbling a bit. She left the duffel bag on the ground and picked up the bucket and dipper again. 

The grave towered over her, and for a moment, she felt like a child again. Or a stink bug, so easy to step on, and then to forget about after being stepped on. Touko steeled herself and stood up, then she began washing the grave. Water ran down stone, streaking it, staining it. Later, it would dry, and later still, it would become dirty again. Regardless, she cleaned it anyway.

She poured water over it several times. Then she put the bucket and dipper down, placed her hands together in prayer, and she said, “Father. Mothers...”

A pause. Touko scraped her teeth against her lips, panting already, and clenched and unclenched her fists. Multiple times. Her mouth had become very, very dry. Many years had passed, but she could still remember them clearly. One mother liked her hair short, always wore makeup and preferred western breakfasts, while the other was younger and had lighter brown streaks in her hair, and she would always make an eastern breakfast. Then, there was the father, with his square jaw, thin lips and bushy eyebrows over beetle eyes. Mostly, she remembers his rotten teeth, and his hands, and his...

“I’m here,” Touko said. Her nails dug into her palms. “I’m still here.”

They didn’t answer. Even if they could, would they have recognised her? She wasn’t a wispy little thing that they could play and have temper tantrums with anymore, who would keep their secrets behind tight lips and wear long skirts and sleeves to hide bruises and handprints, both visible and not. The marks that she couldn’t see, just feel, wouldn’t wash off in the shower, not that she could ever stomach taking those. Being naked, being exposed, like that, her permanently dirtied body on display. No, she was taller now, not just in height but how she stood too.

“I’m helping start up a school with my friends,” she said, voice quivering. A smirk still made its way onto her lips. “And they’re real friends, not... not like the paper dolls that you ripped up, or the one you thought I made up that was really my alter. Or the people in my school who used to lead me on, make fun of me when they thought I couldn’t hear or see them... who would use me and throw me away.”

Like a girl who pretended to be her friend, only to discover who Touko had a crush on and blackmail Touko into giving her money in exchange for her silence. To get the money, Touko sold her lunch, and when the school found out that Touko wasn’t eating and told her parents, they punished her. Touko wasn’t smiling now. She could remember that traitor hanging out with another crowd afterwards. They would ask Touko if they could set her on fire, but if they laughed when they said it, which they did, that made it okay.

Her fists trembled.

“Who I’m with now... they're not just my friends, they’re my family,” said Touko, jaw clenched, and her breathing hitched. She almost let out a sob, but she continued talking, sneering. “They’re the only family I’ve ever had. You... You three... you were terrible guardians. Terrible, vile, despicable people.”

Dead people couldn’t grab her shoulders and shake her. They couldn't slap her, or lock her in a closet without food, or bang her head against a wall or burrow between her legs. To call them monsters would be a compliment. Monsters were imaginary, misunderstood. These were people, and it was dangerous to acknowledge them as anything but.

“No one should go through what you made me go through. I thought... I used to think it was normal. Or that... that I was a bad, difficult child, and that’s why...”

She nearly choked on a sob. 

“But... after spending time with people who do care about me, I accept... that I was a child, no more, no less, just a child, and that you didn’t love me.”

Despite what the father said when the lights were out, when her mattress grunted, when they ‘played’ together. He just liked using her. The mothers never pretended to care about her like he did. She didn’t know if that was better or worse. Syo had taken care of Touko a lot more than any of them had, and Syo had been created from unspeakable evil. They all just liked the money she made, that she used to bargain with them so she could move away for high school and live by herself so long as she paid them. None of them cared about her writing, her passion, her escape, of course. Not like Makoto, who read her I-Novel first, and her other friends, who read it later, especially Byakuya, who even went on to read more of her works.

While she could still dream, still breathe, she could never truly be rid of those three. Even now. But better days were more frequent these days than earlier in her life.

“My friends... can get on my nerves at times... It took me a while, but I know they care about me, really. They don’t just tell me, but they show it too, and it took me so long to appreciate it because of you. The abuse you put me through... didn’t make me stronger, like the hollow movie  plots society churns out. I was always strong. I had to be, to survive.”

They still didn’t respond. Even if they were alive, Touko didn’t know if they would have. She tried to imagine what they would do. Probably act like she was overreacting, or lying. Perhaps they would slap her. Or, maybe, they wouldn’t be able to say anything like they couldn’t speak now.

“I survived, and I learned what real love is.” Her words tripped over each other as she heaved them out, but she still continued talking. Tears blurred her vision. She didn’t wipe them away. “I learned that everything you did wasn’t right. I thought love and friendship would just cause pain in the end and lashed out at it, but I learned that those things can make me stronger. I opened up, and I went from having no friends, from being hated and hating the world in response, to supporting and appreciating others who deserve it and receiving the same back. I learned about love and friendship from my former classmates, my dear friend, Komaru... and my boyfriend, Byakuya Togami.”

Touko shuddered and gulped. Her lips twisted as she regarded their grave.

“Yes... I have a boyfriend. Does that make you jealous?” 

That was directed at all three of them.

“I used to hope that the right person would come along, a prince or a white knight like from some kind of fairytale, or from the sorts of books I’m known to read and write, and then my life would get better. That’s what I believed. But... But I learned to fight for my love, to seek it out, not sit idly, yearning, and submit myself to my demons.”

Indeed, she had rescued Byakuya from his imprisonment in Towa City, and since then, she had given her all to achieve her goals, to be dependable and help the world. Her fantasies about Byakuya saving her from her despair shifted to ones of Touko protecting him. He inspired her to get stronger, for them, for herself, for those she held dear. Not just for her romantic partner, but her friends too, like Komaru. By the end of the mutual killings, Touko had started to consider letting other people in, not just Byakuya, and Komaru, loyal, bubbly Komaru, she had gone and shown Touko that friendship was important as well, and she also meant the world to Touko.

Without realising, Touko had set an example for Byakuya. Proof of the power of love and friendship. When they got together, she had worried that she wouldn’t be able to write anymore, as she had written from her misery, from her fantasies of a better life. However, she had found that she still could write, maybe even better than before, projecting her love for Byakuya into different universes where things played out in varying ways, with all their different nauences, and in the end, the protagonist would reach that love, would embrace it. Despite all her daydreams, being with him in real life had been overwhelming at first, but they walked through it together, hand-in-hand.

“He’s rough around the edges, like me, and though my heart knew we belonged together, the course hasn’t already been smooth. We both... didn’t understand love, properly. Weren’t raised with it. But... But we both get each other. We’re both strong. And he doesn’t touch me after I say no, or hurt me, or want me for my earnings and he doesn’t gaslight me or... or anything like that.”

She covered her mouth and retched. Even now, Touko saw the father in her nightmares, in the shadows of a room, or when she heard that tune he used to whistle. With a painful twinge in her chest, she straightened.

“We’ve been exposed to love, come to feel it ourselves. One day, I will marry him, and we will have children, and I will love him and them, and I will not love you.”

They wouldn’t be stung by that, but her heart gave a skip of pleasure at the thought of the mothers widening their eyes, rendered speechless, and the father’s face contorting in pain. Really, they would just be angry, but she wasn’t scared, because they couldn’t hurt her anymore. She doubted they would apologise, but she didn’t need them to.

“I’m happy now. I’m still here,” she said. “And you’re dead. So... it looks like...”

A humourless grin crept onto her face as she lowered her hand from her mouth.

“... I win.”

Touko didn’t say anything else for a while, standing almost as still as the stone grave. Then her smile crumbled and tremors set in. She took a drag of cold air.

“Anyway, I came here... to see someone else. If not for them being here, I wouldn’t have come at all,” she revealed. Touko drew closer to the grave and skimmed through the names on it, staying on one in particular. One that had been engraved onto it the last time she visited this place.

Born on X. Died on X. The same day. Their birthday.

“My sister,” she said softly. She rested her palm flat on the stone. “Eiko Fukawa.”

When Touko learned of her half-sister many years after she had been and gone, a spark of life, Touko had often wondered what having a sibling would have been like. The closest she had was Komaru, and in a way, Syo. Part of her thought that it would have been a comfort, to have someone going through the same thing, to support her in solidarity, but she couldn’t wish the pain that she went through to be placed upon another.

She bent down and unzipped her duffel bag. From it, she retrieved candles, which she set on the grave and lit. Then she placed the flowers from the shop and a small bottle of milk on the ground in the grave, and she clapped her hands together in prayer, muttering under breath. 

What she said was for only herself and sister to know, and as she came to an end, her shoulders shook more, and by the conclusion, her eyes stung. Touko didn’t know how long she stood there for, but it felt like both a long time and no time at all. With a sniffle, she pulled out her phone. Evening had passed its prime, matured into night, but before she saw the exact time, she saw she had texts from her friends. A missed call from Komaru. She called back.

The call connected.

“You called me?” asked Touko, croaking, and she paused, listening, and slowly walked away with the phone held to her ear. “I’m... I’m going to be okay... I’ll phone Byakuya when I’m closer... I’ll let you know too. I’ll see you both soon.”

In the darkness, the candles burned bright, but eventually, they extinguished, but Touko continued shining.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a zine that is about characters' growth/development. I ended up not applying for reasonz but I came up with this idea for a fic. Happy birthday, Fukawa!


End file.
